Biography

John Sandford

John Sandford is the pseudonym of John Roswell Camp, an American author and journalist. Camp won the Pulitzer Prize in journalism in 1986, and was one of four finalists for the prize in 1980. He also was the winner of the Distinguished Writing Award of the American Society of Newspaper Editors for 1985.

Camp is the author of 35 published novels, all of which have appeared, in one format or another, on the New York Times bestseller lists.

He is also the author of two nonfiction books, one on art (THE EYE AND THE HEART: The Watercolors of John Stuart Ingle) and one on plastic surgery (PLASTIC SURGERY: The Kindest Cut). His books have been translated into most European languages, as well as Japanese and Korean.

John Sandford

Books by John Sandford

They call them Travelers. They move from city to city, panhandling, committing no crimes --- they just like to stay on the move. And now somebody is killing them. Lucas Davenport’s adopted daughter, Letty, gets a phone call from a woman Traveler who thinks somebody is killing her friends, she’s afraid she knows who it is, and now her male companion has gone missing. In the days to come, Lucas will embark upon an odyssey through a subculture unlike any he has ever seen --- and that just may change the course of his life.

After multiple bodies are found in an abandoned farmyard in the middle of cornfields, Lucas Davenport begins to investigate and makes some disturbing discoveries of his own. The victims had been killed over a great many years, one every summer. How could this have happened without anybody noticing? One thing is for sure: the killer had to live close by and was probably even someone they saw every day.

In Southeast Minnesota, a school board meeting is coming to an end. The board chairman announces that the rest of the meeting will be closed, due to personnel issues. The proposal up for a vote before them is whether to authorize the killing of a local reporter. The vote is four to one in favor. Meanwhile, not far away, Virgil Flowers gets a call from Lucas Davenport. A murdered body has been found --- and the victim is a local reporter.

In Israel, a man clutching a backpack searches desperately for a boat. In Minnesota, Virgil Flowers gets a message from Lucas Davenport: You’re about to get a visitor. It’s an Israeli cop, and she’s tailing a man who’s smuggled out an extraordinary relic --- a copper scroll revealing startling details about the man known as King Solomon. As it turns out, there are very bad men chasing the relic, and they don’t care who’s in the way or what they have to do to get it.

Lucas Davenport is investigating a case when the trail leads to the disappearance of a Minnesota political fixer, then --- very troublingly --- to the Minneapolis police department, then --- most troublingly of all --- to a woman who could give Machiavelli lessons. She has very definite ideas about the way the world should work, and the money, ruthlessness and sheer will to make it happen. No matter who gets in the way.

As the crime spree of three teenagers cuts a swath through rural Minnesota, some of it captured on the killers’ cell phones and sent to a local television station, Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigator Virgil Flowers joins the growing army of cops trying to run them down. But even he doesn’t realize what’s about to happen next.

In the small Minnesota town of Deephaven, an entire family has been killed. To Lucas Davenport, the scene looks an awful lot like the kind of scorched-earth retribution he has seen in drug killings sometimes. But this is a seriously upscale town, and the husband was an executive vice president at a big bank. It just doesn’t seem to fit. Until it does.

The superstore chain PyeMart has its sights set on a Minnesota river town, but two very angry groups want to stop it: local merchants fearing for their businesses, and environmentalists predicting ecological disaster. The protests don't seem to be slowing the project, though, until someone decides to take matters into his own hands.

A house demolition leads to the discovery of the bodies of two girls wrapped in plastic. They disappeared in 1985 when Lucas Davenport was a young cop, and his bosses ultimately declared the case closed, though he never agreed. Now Davenport has a chance to investigate and finally learn the truth.

Art history professor James Qatar has a hobby: he takes secret photographs of women to fuel more elaborate fantasies. When he’s alone. Behind locked doors. Then one day, he goes a step further and well, one thing leads to another. Qatar has no choice. He has to kill her. And you know something? He likes it.